Dedicated to the obscure singles and lesser known bands of the rock era. Somebody's gotta do it.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Top Ten Of The Week: See You Real Soon

If we could roll back the calender that I wish I could, I wish we can just forget this year. It's even more crappier than the year before that. It didn't get any better when my headphones at work made the ultimate sacrifice which started to a loose screw that would tighten and I tried to get a pair of pliers and the damn thing wasn't big enough, so went back to the toolbox that got stuck by a GD cabinet door that didn't open and it when it did, good old fucking gravity took hold and the tool box fell all over the place CRASH to which knocked my headphones off my head and broke into two on the ground. Hope the folks up in Minnesota can deal with our top of the line second hand pieces of shit we have here. Sit on that and spin while you play more golf in the snow Mr. Hansen.

I have been pretty ticked off at the mail carrier bitch (still am a week later) who threw our box of CDs on the mud last Friday and good thing I didn't go to Madison. (I may have repeated myself in a earlier blog, so I have to take that entry out) otherwise it probably be in a ditch after a monsoon rainfall. The USPS has been a joke ever since we switched from Viola to Springville address and the carrier comes from Marion! No wonder everything is so fucked up here. Basically I'm afraid to order any more music or boxes since the delivery driver is too fucking lazy to get out of her car to put it in the door or the overhang like they used to years ago. Guess we'll have to blame Obama on that one too. Or more so the fucking dumbass Republicans who work for KOCH and believe money is God. And continue to spill that tar shale oil from Canada from cheap Made In China pipelines that leak every which way.

Miranda Lambert did pretty well in the ACMs on Sunday, but it's a joke when Florida Georgia Line wins for best new "country" band. Waylon Jennings just turned over in his grave.

In the meantime here's the latest top ten to brighten your day, or turn you into the incredible hulk.

1. I'm Bad I'm Nationwide-Z Z Top 1979 Cynical old fool Bob Lefsetz, I can tell when he gets off his meds, he bitches about new artists filling his inbox with their crappy music and telling everybody to please quit learning to play music we have too much to choose from and your music is boring just like his blog is from a cranky old poop who can't fit in anymore. But he still tends to write a great blog about great music of the past which he did this weekend while doing a podcast for Rhino about Deguello, their 1979 classic album to which they would hit gold again with El Loco and then blew up with the 1983 Eliminator to which is banned from my collection. And he's right about Deguello, it's full of classic Billy Gibbons lines to which make you want to listen to ZZ Top, although their last album was overrated and lacking tunes. But back then Z Z Top was still a cult band and they were great before Gibbons and Hill started tripping over their overlong beards.

2. Blowin' Smoke-Kacey Musgraves 2013 OMG another sexy looking chick in the Nashville country scene ain't they a dime a dozen and all sound the same? Jana Kramer blew her wad when she married trailer trash king Brantley Gilbert (see her tattoo with his name on her arm at the ACMs?), we can't escape Carrie Underwood and Gretchen Wilson has a new album out but she can't get arrested anymore. Miranda Lambert still remains the best songwriter of them all and I heard good things about her Pistol Annie bandmate Ashley Monroe although Best Buy doesn't have her damn album (how are we going to keep up to date on new music when Best Buy can't stock the latest fucking releases?) but they do have the new one from an up and coming woman named Kacey Musgraves which has been getting decent reviews on the net. Robert Christgau gave the album Same Trailer Different Park (that's gotta win record of the year on title alone) an A minus while throwing those 100 dollar words nobody can make heads of tails what the fuck he is saying most of the time. Kacey is young but her songwriting is in the same league as Miranda Lambert which does bode well for the future for her, if Universal Mercury promotes her as a serious singer songwriter and not such a Pinup Hot Nashville Chick Singer Of The Month like they usually do. Here's hoping Kacey makes it, and steers clear away from The Peach Pickers hack songwriters group, or Florida Georgia Line.

3. Don't Cha Know-Bill Cosby 1967 One of my all time favorite people ever in movies or comedy or music, Bill Cosby has really done it all. His early comedy albums rank with the best of them (Bill Cosby Is Very Funny Fellow, RIGHT, Why Is There Air, To Russell My Brother Whom I Slept With) but back then he had so much clout that he even talked Warner Brothers into doing a music album. Silver Throat the end result, relies way too much on Jimmy Reed, (Cosby did a whole side of Reed covers) but he got a top forty hit with Little Old Man which was based on Stevie Wonder's Uptight and it's the best song on that album. Best song number two was the B side to which Bill wrote and does a good job of it. Cosby would do another music album with the Watts 103rd Street Band with Hooray For The Salvation Army Band which is more funkier and then another album with Quincy Jones. Cosby has also signed off on jazz albums as well. More to him than just Dr. Huxable from The Cosby Show which elevated him to a new and higher level.

4. Nag Nag Nag-Cabaret Voltaire 1978 Or the beginning of the industrial revolution here. Playing this song or anything off the Industrial Strength Machine Music compilation that Rhino (fucking spell checker working overtime here) put out in 1999, C.V along with the interesting but unlistenable Throbbing Gristle are the early pioneers of this type of noise. Don't listen to this while working on machinery, you'll turn into the Incredible Hulk like I did last Friday. (HULK SMASH!!!)

5. Star Machine-Bob Mould 2012 The dude is old, with balding gray to go with his sliver beard but he's never sounded this close to his old band Husker Du like he did on his latest record Silver Age to which Half Priced Books in town put in the 2 dollar bin, I had to pick it up anyway since it was cheap. I think it's a safe bet we'll never see Husker Du play on stage ever again or Sugar for that matter. Silver Age got great reviews and make many a top ten best of 2012 list of last year. I like it fine myself, it probably would have been in my top 20 best come to think of it but when we start comparing his stuff to Husker Du I then add in the next sentence, it's too bad Grant Hart wasn't around to add a few of his songs to this, then it would have been a great Husker Du record.

6. Slick Titty Boom-Elvin Bishop 1976 Elvin has been around for over 50 years playing in Butterfield Blues Band before striking out on his own and his Capricorn albums remain classic gold especially Struttin My Stuff, which credit should be given to future Starship leader Mickey Thomas. The B side to Fool Around And Fell In Love was this 5 minute freakout over a ugly starstuck groupie with the fun line She's Yours, She's Mine? She's Somebody Elses too and I managed to convince Bob Dorr to play this on Backtracks years ago. Elvin Bishop continues to put out albums when he feels like it, Mickey Thomas is more at home at the Casinos playing old Jefferson Starship songs and We Built This City he can have all to himself. But it was never as fun as Slick Titty Boom. Dedicated to the 15 year tramp at Kum N Go whose throng was bigger than the shorts she had on. She got a few evil looks from some of the 40 something women waiting in line. Kinda looked like something like this:

7. Johnny Come Home-Fine Young Cannibals 1986 Sonya at work: I like the way they play but I can't stand the way the guy sings. Not too many people did. They made two albums and then disappeared. Andy Cox and David Steele did participate in the return of The English Beat they reunited a while ago. As for Gift, he has recorded a solo album and did do a FYC band without the other two guys but for the most part he's been under the radar for a long long time. Movin on.

8. Anna Sun-Walk The Moon 2012 I have added this song a couple times to the bubbling under five and yes this is what passes for pop music nowadays but almost a year after releasing this song I still find it to be kinda kitschy and a lot of fun including getting to the hook laden chorus, in a way that made OK GO the flavor of the month a few years ago although I still play that cd too. I don't think KZIA played this on their autotuned craptastic forty station but this did make it in one of those Now That's What I Call Music Series that everybody buys, plays it and then either donates it or turn into something you put your drink on. WTM does have that OK GO vibe as well a bit of Weezer and Pavement into the equation. But then again history has shown that bands like WTM does have a very limited shelf life and probably be forgotten in another month or two.

9. Jump Start-Jethro Tull 1987 They continue to be the butt of jokes when it comes to winning the GrammyTM for best heavy metal album overcoming Metallica and the like and NARAS got it wrong. This is more folk rock than hard metal rock and while I continue to read the negative comments from the net about their album Crest Of A Knave I find it to be a pretty good comeback album for Ian Anderson and company. It seemed to spur them on making two more albums in that wake: 1989 uneven Rock Island and Catfish Rising which was an improvement. Roots And Branches their 1995 effort was boring.

10. Stand Down Margaret-The English Beat 1982 I don't have a high opinion of Maggie Thatcher and even 30 years after the fact, the Irish and a lot of British folks still don't like her or her policies. And don't expect Morrissey to come give her eulogy at her funeral either, or the English Beat which originally did this song off their 1980 I Just Can't Stop It album which ushered in the British Ska Punk craze of 1980 along with The Specials, The Selector etc. Thatcher died from a stroke at age 87. I think I'm inclined to remember Andy Johns or Robert Ebert more. Nothing more to say about this but somebody did http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead---now-1818150

Which leaves me to tell you a story of Jerry and Relics. I used to trade a lot of music up there and half the time I end up buying a lot of promos he didn't think would sell out of his used bins. He had the comeback Killing Joke album pandemonium used as well as Face To Face Big Choice and both bands I bought their new music when it came out. I also turned Jerry on to Denzil's 1994 forgotten classic Pub that came out on Giant Records. Denzil Thomas sounded a lot like Nick Lowe and had that English sound that was like Nick and Graham Parker and Thomas did come into this state a few times. Sad to say like most of the great albums of the 1990s that didn't make it (distributions, label problems, payola etc etc, bad promotion) Pub felled by the wayside and I don't think Denzil Thomas ever made another proper album again. He does have a twitter account but for the most part is basically forgotten except for those who still have Pub in their collection. As for Denzil himself, I believe he works here at this place. BCL a management consultant company. I posted a link to it originally but it's now restricted. It's not rock and roll.

Tad is right about one thing. Don't You Worry About A Thing isn't on any of the best ofs out there. Which is the reason why I still have Innervisions in my collection to go with the first two Greatest Hits packages that Motown put out way back in the 70s. Surprised to say that I have never really heard Fingertips Part 1. Part 2, too many times....The Four Tops had a resurgence of hits after leaving Motown for ABC Dunhill in 1972. Since Universal owns both the Motown and ABC/MCA catalog they have tend to keep both eras on separate labels although a combination of the best of the labels came via Hip O and the uneven Essential Collection that I once had and traded in for The Ultimate Motown Collection. The Essential Collection cherry picks the best known from Motown, ABC/Dunhill, and Casablanca (When She Was My Girl) but also adds the crappy I Believe In You And Me which gives me nightmares of Whitney and Celine doing that. Only Marvin Gaye CDs I have is the 15 song Super Hits that I found on CD years ago and a Tribute To Nat King Cole, a curio and off the wall album. What's Going On I have on LP somewhere in this mess.

Joe Bonamassa continues to play havoc with me since I can't spell his name and always fuck it up every time I get a thought or two from him but he has really been cranking albums out, something like 15 in the past decade. A great guitarist with ego to boot, Black Country Communion put out 3 albums and a live one before Joe had enough of lead screamer Glen Hughes, I always thought there should have been more Joe singing and less Glenn screaming although Jason Bonham plays drums and worth hearing. Producer Kevin Shirley brought out the best in Joe in the last two albums including Racing Toward The Daylight which would have been big 30 years ago when this type of blues rock was the norm. He's really never made a bad album, only slight when Glenn Hughes comes to pay a visit.

Finally, a moment silence for Andy Johns was moved from this world at age 61 from liver failure. Johns was a great producer who produced the best bands of the 70s and even Cinderella for that matter. But we also bid a fond farewell to Annette Funicello who finally lost her battle with MS at age 70. Who didn't grow up in the early 60s to which The Mickey Mouse Club was played in repeats and everybody wanted to be a part of that or being Annette's boyfriend? She's best known for Beach Blanket Bingo to which Frankie Avalon played her sidekick more or less. The sad fact of life is too bad we can't relive the past of a more innocent time. Too bad the kids today missed out. See you real soon too Annette XOXO

Heck I've been in a cranky mood ever since the first of the year it seems Tad. But got a few things on the backburner and the seasonal Madison Bargain hunt is coming quick. As always feel free to return to see what surprises are in store. Cheers!